BEYONCE Vinyl & CDs

Review: Beyonce's seventh studio album, Renaissance, was one of her biggest to date back in 2022. It turned out plenty of big hits which got heard on dance floors all over the world and now one of them makes it to this cheeky 7". 'Cuff' was written and produced by Beyonce with additional help from Raphael Saadiq and The-Dream, amongst others, including Chic's Nile Rodgers. And you can hear that in the low-slung disco grovels and funky basslines that are the bedrock for Bey to do her vocal thing. 'Work It Out' comes on the flip for a more slow and percolating funk workout.

Review: Beyonce's last album was widely heralded as a triumph by all. It found her diving into house music and working with scene stalwarts like Luke Solomon and Honey Dijon. It won a Grammy for its efforts. Now, even though plenty of the originals were ready to work a club dancefloor, we get treated to some remixes. They all focus on the standout single 'Break My Soul' and we get funky and soulful stuff from Terry Hunter, broken beat from Will I Am, house thumps from Honey Dijon, and filter-heavy stuff from The Queens. Add in the Nita Aviance club mix and the original version and you have a useful package indeed.

Review: Beyonce joins Drake in the house-via-Baltimore club 'renaissance', which has seen to a good deal of major hip-hop & R&B artists working in the styles over the course of entire albums and mixtapes. This being the queen of pop's first album in over six years, some naysayers say songs like 'Break My Soul' (filled with 90s organ and downtempo kicks and snares a-la Robin S) and 'Energy' (packed with batida stylings) are paint-by-numbers, but we beg to differ; for Beyonce, it's a polyglot of reinventory music.